Management at Aurora’s Arapahoe Park realized that horses racing, or getting ready to race, and planes — including the renowned Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron — flying low in the general vicinity aren’t a good mix.
“We certainly didn’t feel it was going to be conducive to having horses on the racetrack with riders on them,” Bill Powers, Arapahoe Park’s director of racing, said Friday.
So after opening its 2015 meeting with four consecutive afternoons of racing, May 22 through Memorial Day, Arapahoe Park this weekend is “dark” because of the three-day Rocky Mountain Air Show, a long-time area favorite that concludes its first-ever run at the adjacent Aurora Reservoir on Sunday.
“You’re going to have planes flying as low as 100 feet overhead the area,” track announcer Jonathan Horowitz said in advance of the show. “Horses are animals and some of them, as you see with the Kentucky Derby, handle the extra stimuli better than others.
“We didn’t want to get in a situation where you have a plane flying so low to the ground that it could potentially upset some of the horses. It probably wouldn’t have been an issue, but we wanted to take the extra precaution.”
Powers noted that the air show “had made arrangements with the city, and they came to see us, and that’s when we got involved. We worked together on this.”
That included allowing the air show to use Arapahoe Park’s lot as one of the parking areas, with shuttles taking spectators to the reservoir.
At Arapahoe Park, training takes place on the track in the early mornings, ending 30 minutes before the 10:30 a.m. opening flyovers were scheduled at the air show Saturday and Sunday. That training was to go on as usual this weekend.
On race days, Arapahoe Park’s first post is 1 p.m., with races going through late afternoon. The first races’ post parades would have come shortly after the 12:45 p.m. start of the Thunderbirds’ segments Saturday and Sunday.
Aerobatic demonstrations were slotted to end at 3 p.m. both weekend days.
But even if horse racing doesn’t take place, how will the air traffic overhead affect the roughly 1,000 horses in the stable area?
“I think that’s less of an issue because they’re in an environment where they’re comfortable, it’s enclosed, and they’re used to it,” Horowitz said.
The track’s 39-day meeting runs through Aug. 16. The three vacated race dates were switched. The first moved to May 22, which became the opening date, and the others will be two Thursdays — June 25 and July 30.
Powers said the rearranged dates have a silver lining, because the race meeting concludes June 18 at The Downs Racetrack and Casino in Albuquerque, and many horses will make the move to Arapahoe Park. “It should make our field sizes larger for the upcoming weeks,” Powers said.
The 2016 air show already is booked to return to the reservoir — but in October, after the Arapahoe Park meeting.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
